For indie artists, it isn’t always easy to be seen or heard in the vast musical landscape of the Internet. You have good music and a great story, but your audience seems quite pale in comparison. You think to yourself: is my music not catchy enough to online listeners? In reality what you are probably missing is not musical prowess, but an effective social media presence.

A well-planned social media strategy can help indie artists build an incredibly faithful audience and online fan base. Using social media to connect with your fans opens the window for them into who you are as an artist. Fans who are connected to artists at a personal level are more likely to spread the artists’ music, attend live shows and tours, and even support the musician financially.

Below are several examples of indie artists that found success using social media marketing:

Alex MocciaIn less than a year, this indie female vocalist grew her fan base from 700 to 10,000 followers on Instagram. She uses the platform to engage her audience around her personal brand, while also providing previews of her upcoming music. Her approach on social media is rooted in personal interaction, and she will often spend 10-12 hours circulating content on Instagram. Alex actively searches for people that are engaging with popular influencers or music accounts similar to her style, and will begin a discussion with those potential fans. She uses these conversations to divert people to her music and profile on other social media platforms. Alex also has her timing down: she is most active during popular trends like Throw Back Tuesday and uses hashtags to get noticed during trendy times.TorcheThese Indie rockers were looking to increase the hype around their 4th studio album Restarter, earlier in February of this year. To engage new and returning fans, they developed some extremely creative web ideas for their social media. First, they created a 16-bit-style arcade game that could be played from the landing page of their website. To add to the fun, the characters in the game were the members of the band! Additionally, the band released an optical illusion on Twitter, that fans eventually solved and discovered a URL link. The link led fans to the full album artwork elsewhere on the web, completing an exhilarating and rewarding digital mystery.

•YouTube audience growth went up by 12%•Facebook saw a 10% increase•Twitter got a big bump with 26%•Instagram audience numbers went up by 14% •Spotify had a whopping 25% follower increase

Molly Lewis

Molly is the writer and performer of her own original Ukelele songs, who found her initial fame through YouTube covers. She now uses Patreon, an online arts patronage platform, to release new content to her followers. The Patreon platform allows fans to pledge money to artists in a way that can sustain their music for a long period of time. Patreon has a Patron-only feed, where Molly posts goodies, demos, and updates for her most loyal fans to see.

· Makes $2535 (as of this writing) from her 402 patrons on Patreon every time she releases a new original song· 4,000 Facebook page likes, over 14.5K Twitter followers, 1600 Instagram followers, over 10K views of your Google+ profile… AND an amazing 32K subscribers and over 4.5 million views on YouTube

Matthew Ebel

Matthew is piano rocker who is hailed by geeky crowds for his science-fiction-themed performances and albums. He reaches his devoted fan base through a subscription based website, that offers a wide range of perks. Some of these perks include including access to new music as soon as he creates it, new live concert recordings every month, broken apart tracks ready for remixing, and much more. His social media presence has produced at least 40 hard core fans, who he says make up 26.3% of all of his income, showing how committed they are to his music.

If you’re ready to create a social media strategy for your music, check out our article next week! We’ll outline best practices to garner an engaged fan base, and discuss how you could use that fan base to start a thriving career in music.

If you’re ready to create a social media strategy for your music, check out our article next week!We’ll outline best practices to garner an engaged fan base, and discuss how you could use that fan base to start a thriving career in music.

Majed Assais a marketing enthusiast and regular surfer of many online music outlets (his favorite is Hype Machine). As a marketing intern at Slammin Media, he has recently been exposed to the many online challenges facing indie musicians. You can follow his journey into the marketing industry on Twitter at @MajedAssa.

Slammin Media is an online, digital and social marketing company. We have successfully represented and promoted numerous indie artists over the years as they pursue their dream career in music. We take care of all aspects of promotion of their shows, tours and e-commerce, so they can focus on making art and music.